Finn Wolfhard, Billy Bryk and Fred Hechinger on Hell of A Summer + Movie Review: Minecraft + Trailer Park: One Battle After Another

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's Movie Podcast. I am your host Movie Mike, and boy do I have a great episode for you today. I'm sitting down with the stars, directors, and writers of Hell of a Summer, which is a new horror comedy out in theaters now. Finn Wolfhart, Billy Brick, and Fred Heckinger. We're gonna talk about gen Z representation in film right now. In the movie review, I'll give you my thoughts on Minecraft. I've gone back and forth on whether or not this movie was gonna be good or not. That first trailer I was like, oh boy, second trailer I was like, Okay, I can see the magic here.

00:00:33
Speaker 2: Did it make me a believer?

00:00:35
Speaker 1: And in the trailer park we'll be talking about the new Leonardo DiCaprio movie, One Battle after Another. He is teaming up with legendary director Paul Thomas Anderson for the first time. Thank you for being here, Thank you for being subscribed. Shout out to all my members of the movie crew. And now let's talk movies.

00:00:54
Speaker 2: From the Nashville Podcast Network. This is Movie Mike Movie Podcast.

00:01:00
Speaker 1: I got to get into my conversation with the stars of Hell of a summer. It is in theaters now. It is a horror comedy starring Finn Wolfhard. You would know him as Mike on Stranger Things. He was also Richie in It, Trevor in Ghostbusters Afterlife and Frozen Empire. He is a really great actor and now he's directing movies. This is his directorial debut along with his friend Billy Brick, who he co wrote the movie with co directed it with as well. Billy was also in Ghostbusters Afterlife and he was just in that Saturday Night movie. And then we also have Fred Heckinger, who you would know from Gladiator two where he played one of the emperors. He played alongside Joseph Quinn, who was also in Stranger Things, so there's a big connection here. Fred was also in Season one of The White Lotus. He was the son of the family where his dad was Steve Zhon and most recently he was in the Oscar nominated movie Nickel Boys. So he is another actor greatly on the rise right now. And in this movie he plays a camp counselor named Jason who's twenty four years old. He's going back to camp and all his coworkers are teenagers and he's just struggling.

00:02:03
Speaker 2: Making a connection with them.

00:02:04
Speaker 1: He is in charge this year and trying to be a good example, but also trying to hang out with all the teenagers. Anything that's gonna be the biggest thing he has to get over the summer until he realizes there's somebody with a mask going around killing people, picking him off one by one. So the movie is part horror slasher, much like you would expect from a movie like Scream or Halloween, but then it also has a lot of elements of comedy. It kind of reminded me of like Idle Hands back in the nineties, which was one of my favorite horror comedies of that decade, one of my favorite horror comedies of all time, which, by the way, Finn Wolfhardt is actually working on the reboot of that movie. And I really think this could be a defining slasher movie for gen Z because when you see Hell of a Summer, it is characters talking like actual teenagers would talk. And that's important because when I watched this movie, I could tell that it was a young person writing this dialogue like a teenager would speak, and oftentimes you get out of such adults writing parts for gen Z, kids that sound nothing like them. And sometimes I feel there's an underrepresentation of their generation right now in film, because oftentimes the people making movies like this are much older and just by their age, are a little bit out of touch. Now you have two young directors and writers making their debut. This reminds me of a movie I would be excited to go to on a Friday night, even though I'd be underage and couldn't get into this movie. Back when you used to go to the movies and just look at a poster and sometimes that would be all the indication you had going into it. You remember those days where you could just go walk outside the movies and say, Hey, that poster looks pretty good. I think I'll go watch That doesn't really happen anymore. You have to watch all the trailers, you have to know everything about things. But I feel like if you just saw the hell of a Summer poster out front and you thought that actually looks interesting, that looks like a lot of fun, I want to go see that movie. This movie is bringing back something I think is needed right now in Hollywood. It's basically if you took Friday the thirteenth mixed it with Scream mixed it with a little bit of wet, hot American summer, you get hell of a summer. So right now, let's sit down with Finnwolfhart, Billy Brick, and Fred Heckinger at the Bell Court here in Nashville.

00:04:12
Speaker 2: Like your pants, Oh, thank you so much? I like, I like all y'all. Are we kind of dressed the same? You were all clothes?

00:04:23
Speaker 3: Not really, but kind of.

00:04:25
Speaker 1: I wish I feel like a bonder that we all kind of look alike.

00:04:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm like, I'm liking this.

00:04:30
Speaker 1: I gotta say, I love the movie and it makes me feel oddly nostalgic, but also like this is the movie I've been looking for because I feel like the slasher genre got a little bit stale, a little bit overdone. And with you guys behind this having just that fresh young voice, it just feels like I feel all the things that I felt when I watched Scream, But now I have a brand new movie in twenty twenty five. It just feels like this is what should be happening right now. How does it feel for you guys for this movie with direct it being a part of it and it finally coming out now.

00:05:03
Speaker 4: That's really nice to be to say it feels great. I mean, you know, it's been such a long journey to get here. You know, we started in twenty nineteen with this, you know, writing the script, and it's.

00:05:16
Speaker 3: Really surreal to think about, Yeah, because we've been working on it for so long, and our goal always, our dream was for it to come out theatrically, and now working with Neon bringing it theatrically nationwide is like kind of the best possible way that it could come out. So it's a bit of a pinch me moment.

00:05:34
Speaker 1: I have to say, Like Neon has just been crushing it with all the original horror, Like how was that relationship kind of formed of you guys having this idea and then being like, we want to be a part of that.

00:05:44
Speaker 2: Oh well, they they just saw the movie.

00:05:48
Speaker 3: At Tiff when we premiered and liked it. And then that was a conversation that that like we were just in conversation with that, not we didn't have any of the conversations, but the producers were in the conversation with them. And then yeah, like it was just a matter of sort of when was the right time to get this out? And then we feel like really fortunate because yes, Neon has been killing it for I mean years and years and years, but especially in the last eighteen months with horror films and original horror films so.

00:06:17
Speaker 2: And really every other everything they just want picture. So it's crazy.

00:06:20
Speaker 3: It's pretty cool.

00:06:21
Speaker 4: It's a testament to how cool they are as a company that you know, they make stuff like Anora and then they also make crazy, weird comedy horror films like ours or you know. So yeah, it's great to be a part of that sort of legacy.

00:06:37
Speaker 1: I guess. I think the thing to me that I really stuck out about this movie that I don't see a whole lot now is a good quotable movie. Like I found myself thinking, like I started thinking of whenever your character is kind of like sad that he's not the one being killed because he's like, no, it's probably just killing at random, right, So how did that go from writing everything and then seeing it translate on screen? Like how is this still funny?

00:07:05
Speaker 2: That's a good question because it's still.

00:07:06
Speaker 1: Funny because you write it and then you're totally directing it, and then you're seeing all the edits and then you're thinking like now that people are seeing it, Like, how can you think, like, is this even funny tony to us everybody else?

00:07:19
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a good question, and you just have to trust that it was funny to you. And like, obviously, when you see a joke a million times, it doesn't make you laugh every single time, So sometimes you have that instinct like can I push this further? Do I try to make this funny to me every time I'm watching it? But in my opinion, it's kind of a dangerous game to be playing where it's like, if this really made us laugh as we're writing it, and we feel like this is the most sort of most grounded version of this performance, the read of this line that we think worked best, we have to trust it. And then as we screen it for people and get other eyes on it, it's really helpful to see sort of what they're laughing at. And I'd say more often than not, the stuff that we thought was the funniest, Like our instincts were right, So.

00:07:59
Speaker 2: I don't know it's funny.

00:08:00
Speaker 3: I try not even to think about it as funny all the time.

00:08:03
Speaker 5: Yeah, and edit, I mean yeah, And then in the production side of it, we were just talking about that the other night where you this the script that this wrote was so it was so funny and in such a grounded, character driven way, and there was you know, just every scene is quite intentional in that sense, and there is a thing once you start doing the scenes you kind of have to everyone who's in it is also so funny, and I feel like we would play and explore. But at the end of the day, like the movie ends up being kind of like ninety five percent or something of the of the actual script from the get go. So there is a sort of trust element that Billy's talking about that I think maybe you're asking about in terms of if we found this funny at the outset, Like you know, it won't always be the shiny thing, but focus on it, yeah, because it really is. It is the intentional thing here.

00:08:59
Speaker 1: I love what you said about the movie being sole character driven, because I think that's also what set out to me is like I could buy into everybody's personalities and I know how Jason is going to react to something because he's a guy who loves his job. Like that's kind of what I took away from this, Like this is somebody who just wants to do his job to the best of visibility, and that is what he's kind of here to do. And then you have your character Bobby, who's just like, I gotta be good looking to these guys. So what's the how do you write really well rounded characters?

00:09:27
Speaker 3: You write every character is if you're gonna play them in the movie.

00:09:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.

00:09:31
Speaker 1: So is this movie a lot of like what you guys are like in real life?

00:09:34
Speaker 2: A little bit?

00:09:35
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:09:35
Speaker 3: I like to think that we're a little more self aware than our characters, and that's sort of why we're able to make fun of certain aspects of our personality. But I mean, there's definitely I would say that Finn and I when we were just sort of joking around, would fall into these caricatures of ourselves, which I'd say sort of became Bobby and Chris, and like it's a send up of our dynamic and sort of our own personal I don't know, I don't want to say like insecurities or something, but like there's elements of Bobby for sure that come from my own life that I just find funny and like I'm not fully committed to but the fact that I can very easily think like that is concerning to me, like it's a little too easy to fall into that sort of mindset. But then I'm not even actually joking about the like writing every character, like writing every characters if you'd play it, And I think that's thing helpful about being an actor and a writer. As we were writing versions of the script, it's like we would do a pass with each character in mind, being like, yeah, I were to be sent this character, what would excite me most about playing this part? What would I want to see? And then we try to add that so every character sort of felt fleshed out and had something real and sort of had like a life behind them, even if they're a character who gets killed off very quickly. So it was kind of like a funny so total way of being.

00:10:48
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, I think it's also just like, you know, just thinking about you know that there's a lot of young actors out there, and ninety nine percent of stuff that gets sent out just like I don't know, just doesn't feel right or you know, it doesn't feel like it has you know that the character that's you auditioned for maybe has everything that you want or you know, the arc that you want. And it was one of those things where we were kind of approaching it from an actor's perspective.

00:11:19
Speaker 1: And then coming from the horror element of the movie, which I love. What were some of those movies that you went back and studied and thought, I want to take a little from this movie. I want to take a little from that movie and put it into this.

00:11:31
Speaker 3: We watched the Thing. We watched a lot of the John Carpenter films, just because of the blocking of those films in the way that he sort of is able to block and represent group dynamics, and like the Thing specifically this idea of group that sort of splintering, splintering and turning against each other. So that was a reference the First Halloween obviously, but a lot, like most of our sort of stylistic references were from comedy movies or from movies that weren't in the horror. Do you have any that you.

00:12:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you know, like Sean of the Dead was a huge one that we looked at. And then you know, as far as even just like visual visual stuff, I mean we looked a lot about you know, at like uh the Howling or like, uh, like Dean Kundy's stuff. It was like the DP I guess of the eighties and even just like even though nut like it is nothing like any that's like we would just watch like movies that we loved and like grew up watching and like loved the look of and you know, for whatever reason, and this like I watched Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade like five times, like in the year that we wrote this, and it has nothing to do with the movie in the slightest, but like, I don't know, there's some kind of adventure in that movie that I just love so much, and and in that era as well, like late eighties, early nineties, and then you know, yeah Scream obviously, so like a lot of different influences coming from kind of all angles, a lot of like Coen brother stuff too, raising Arizona One to But then yeah, like even with movies like that, there's they're like visually they're so energetic with Debt or Shanna the Dead, and we didn't want that this movie to feel like that. So it was like, what can we chased by those movies without feeling like we're doing those movies because it didn't.

00:13:16
Speaker 3: Feel right for the script.

00:13:17
Speaker 1: But yeah, Fred, what did you love most about playing Jason because he's a character who's so endearing you root for him the entire time. And I feel like you really brought that role alive. What did you love about that role?

00:13:28
Speaker 2: I really loved.

00:13:30
Speaker 5: How two wrote him. I loved that in this story, every single character kind of once the killing starts in the movie, they don't like just magically transform into different heroic people. They they can only react and figure out their their issues by being themselves and their most kind of eccentric and uh sometimes stubborn ways. Uh. And so I I, yeah, I think some like you play people that you find also genuinely inspiring. Like he's someone who is uh, he's like gets he's in on the joke, he gets that people. He gets that he can be a joke to people, but also is funny himself and also not a joke to himself at the same time. And I felt that those things altogether, you meant something to me. And uh and felt, uh, yeah, resonant of a lot of people I know and how I feel sometimes. So I really liked that call. I liked that he was like in on the joke but also not at the same time. I thought that that was like a yeah, there's there's so there's so many qualities to him that I really admire and loved playing.

00:14:52
Speaker 1: I have one final question for you guys, what did it feel whenever you first started to have success, Because Fann, I remember you when you were in pop music videos, Like I'm huge into punk rock, Canadian punk rock, and I remember seeing you in those way back then. Like what does it feel when you just start like getting those first roles, getting those first projects, and you just feel like this actually might be a reality my dream.

00:15:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, we got to talk about Canadian punk rock after this, but I would say, I mean that's kind of I was just happy doing that, like even as like a little kid, being able to be a part of these cool indie projects like music videos for cool bands that I loved and student films, and like I just loved doing it and being on set and it just kind of snowballed. And all those sets inspired me to direct and want to direct. And I feel like, you know, we made this film all together and specifically when me and Billy started writing it, and like that feeling even though we made it, you know, with with like a bigger crew and it wasn't like a student film. It's still had that energy, like it still had that sort of vibe that I could feel when I was that young on set and just looking at all these amazing kind of young artists like starting their careers, and to me, that's what I'm always chasing. And sometimes you find it in every I feel like you find it in every set in some way. So but it was definitely felt great, Like I loved doing all those videos.

00:16:25
Speaker 1: Well, this has been great. It's also confirmed my feeling that you guys are all like real friends in real life, because that comes across in the movie. So I hope everybody goes to see it and can feel that as well.

00:16:33
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thanks for the time, dat.

00:16:35
Speaker 1: Guys, Let's get into it now. A spoiler free movie review of a Minecraft movie starring Jack Black Jason Momoa, directed by Jared Hess who also directed movies like Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre.

00:16:51
Speaker 2: And I did not.

00:16:52
Speaker 1: Expect to be so inspired by such a family friendly movie of a video game. I didn't even play. All the young people in the comment who are gonna be like you, boomer, you haven't played Minecraft. And I'm getting at that age now where I'm aged out of some of the video game adaptations. Now we have Jack Black, who is just doing every video game property that's being made into a movie. He also did Borderlands, he did Jumanji, and I think out of all those, this has been his best to date.

00:17:22
Speaker 2: What this movie is about.

00:17:23
Speaker 1: You get four misfits thrown into the overworld with the purpose of saving it. Jack Black plays the character Steve, who is the main guy in Minecraft. He aspired to work as a minor as a kid, didn't get to live out that dream until he was an adult. Got thrown into the overworld as he discovered this cube that's kind of like the test ract from Avengers, which I got a lot of Avengers one vibes from Minecraft. Meta dog got captured by these pig like creatures and then was stuck there four years. Much like Jumanji. This movie is kind of a mix of Avengers and Jumanji because where you had the Tessa act in the Avengers, you have the cube here that they are trying to find again in order to open the portal back into the world. His dog escapes, takes the portal back to his house, and eventually lands into the hands of Jason Momoa, who plays a character named garbage Man, who was the best video game player in the world in nineteen eighty nine and has hung onto that ever since. You have a kid named Henry with his sister who lost their mom, so they are moving to a new town to start a new life. She is going to work as a social media manager for a potato chip company. And he is a very bright, smart kid. Doesn't really get along with people, but he has a real creative and inventive mind. He gets into some trouble has to call Jason Momoa for her help to try to get him out of it. They reunite with the Cube and all get thrown into the overworld, where our journey begins. This movie surprisingly had a lot of heart, and I could tell from the director, Jared Hess that he knows how to make a movie because when you take a property like Minecraft, the best selling video game of all time, which is wild to me. I was always aware of Minecraft and what you have to do in the video game, I just never played it myself. Essentially, it is a sandbox game where the game is what you make it. It is only limited by your creativity to build things, to fight things, and that was inspiring to me. I just never really got into it, but after watching this movie, I just felt like this is such a big inspiration piece for kids to find joy in and for kids to flourish in their creativity, and that is really what this movie is all about. Jack Black's character is larger than life, and sometimes I feel like he gets criticized a little bit for being so exuberant, and I don't feel like his character was showcased properly in the trailer, at least to the adults who kind of have to be won over by a movie like this, because in the movie theater, the kids were ecstatic and I'd never seen that before. Whenever your first here, Steve say I am Steve. That was essentially this generation's Avengers Assemble.

00:20:07
Speaker 2: That is the movie quote of the year.

00:20:09
Speaker 1: Everybody went nuts for that moment, and that was in the trailer that speaks volumes to me about the relationship that people have with this property. And this is one of those movies that you could have put anything on the screen because it's a huge ip. It was gonna crush opening weekend no matter what, because the fan base was there and they were gonna go see it and they were gonna go love it. Just because it was seeing something that they've spent so much time with playing this video game come to life.

00:20:39
Speaker 2: And it was cool seeing.

00:20:40
Speaker 1: Those moments pop in the theater, even though they didn't fully land with me because I don't really know the lord that is Minecraft, but to see everybody else experiencing that, it made me feel that I realized there was chemical reactions happening in the theater to these kids' brains, that this is gonna be a very significant moment for them. I remember those having moments like that back in the theater, or even watching movies for the first time at home, the movies that changed me, the movies that inspired me. This is definitely gonna be one of those movies. And I think it's gonna be the harsh older critics who are beating this movie to hell because on paper, it's probably not what you would consider to be a quote unquote good movie. If I went into this movie just for the plot alone, I do think it's there. I really do believe it because it has a story, it has character development. The only thing I feel, as an adult that is hard for me to overcome and just fully enjoy it is some of the performances that have to be so over the top.

00:21:41
Speaker 2: Some of the.

00:21:41
Speaker 1: Dialogue is overly cheesy and at times a little bit cringe worthy when if you take it out of context, like they did in the trailer, you think train wreck all over this thing. Because the characters themselves are very cartoony, Jason Momoa's character and really all the characters.

00:21:58
Speaker 2: They're really just portray.

00:22:00
Speaker 1: T'srading a live action animated movie because for the most part, you really only have four humans in this movie. Jason Momoa as the garbage Man, Jack Black as Steve Ma Myers as Natalie, who was also in Wednesday, which it took me a moment to realize, Oh that's her. Danielle Brooks, who you might remember from Orange Is the New Black, also get sucked into the overworld, and then you have Sebastian Hansen who plays Henry. Those are the four main humans. You also have Jennifer Coolidge, who really only sticks to the real world and kind of has a whole b plot going on. So I also feel like by having these four characters being the only ones you can interact with, and they're interacting with these fictional cubic characters, it's obviously going to cause for a little bit of clunky dialogue. I did enjoy the visuals in the Overworld. At times, I wish they were a little bit more rich. There are moments that lacked a little bit of depth for me, and there were shots that were clearly just Jack Black behind the green screen, or probably the flying scenes where it just felt like they had a wind machine and the green screen was in the background, and those moments looked a little bit just hard to believe and really broke that illusion for me of the Overworld, which at times looked really fun and vibrant. I loved all the fire, I loved all the chase scenes. I loved the scenes at night with the creepers coming out. There were some pretty good battle scenes. I love the moments they were creating all the weapons. I thought all those moments looked really good. But sometimes when the action got a little bit too big, the special effects that animations really took a downgrade. And I feel like that was the biggest struggle of this movie. And also for a movie that is a minecraft movie all about creativity and building, I thought there should have been a little bit more building, because the first act really won me over with the story I started getting invested with all the characters when it came to my favorite. I love garbage Man, played by Jason Momoa. I thought his character had a lot of heart. I thought he was actually going through the roughest patch out of any character in this movie, because he was a really big deal in nineteen eighty nine. Now he has a video game store that is crumbling, he's about to get evicted, and he needs a win. And it's probably because I'm in my thirties that I would identify more with his character and what he was struggling with. But I think through his dialogue and some of his actions and fighting, he came across as a little bit of a corny character.

00:24:19
Speaker 2: But corny works in this movie.

00:24:21
Speaker 1: Corney isn't always bad, and I think you need larger than life personalities like Jason Momoa and Jack Black to really pull this movie off, because I can't really think of any other A list star who has those comedic chops to make this movie work. And someone watched this movie and say they gave really awful performances, But I think they did what they needed to do to make this work, to make it resonate with the kids and the young people who are a fan of Minecraft. It's just not for adults. And I thought I could recognize that I was sold in the story. I was sold into the adventure. I thought it moved along really well, clocking in just over minutes. I think it was like an hour and thirty three minutes. For me, it dipped a little bit and act too, where that is where I thought they should have had some more exploration with the building. It kind of just became your typical family adventure movie at that point, and I feel like that was the moment for it to really shine and to grab the viewer and take him on this journey and really own what it means to be a Minecraft movie, because I think this is easily going to spawn a franchise. There's just no question here. It has it written all over it. I think it really easily sets up another movie where I feel this movie just lacked an emotional punch, which I kind of had to put myself back into the perspective of a kid of what I would have wanted out of a movie like this, and the character Henry resonates with me being a smarter kid growing up.

00:25:46
Speaker 2: I was never the smartest kid, but I was always.

00:25:49
Speaker 1: Looked at as being like, I want to copy off of that kid's homework because he's pretty smart. I don't think because I was smart was the reason I didn't have friends. I was just socially awkward. But I identified with the character of Henry in that sense of not really fitting into school and just being constantly curious wanting to create. I really think his character needed a little bit more of a heroic moment to really inspire kids. I just think it came to a point where it felt like, all right, we have to end this movie. Let's just kind of wrap it up here, And for me, it just didn't really hit that home run at the end. It was a fine ending, but out of everything in the film, the ending felt the most generic. But even with that being said, the movie did win me over a lot. This was a case of bad trailer, good movie, which I'd rather have. The opposite is much worse. When you see a trailer that is so just slick, makes you excited to go watch the movie, and then you go see it and leave so underwhelmed. This was not the case at all. And it's a movie you're gonna see online and probably see a lot of negativity around. We've had a lot of those that we've been talking about recently, where this narrative starts of how bad it is, and that's all critics fixate on, every review fixates on. But if you actually go watch this movie and experience it and remember what you were like at this age when a movie like this was directed towards you, you would feel that again. So I feel like I've given the best explanation I can of where I struggle at this point in my life where I still feel like a movie like this is so important and I value good family friendly adventure movies because they were so impactful to me as a kid, so impressionable at that time. And one of the main reasons I still do this podcast is because I want to see that translate to the next generation, to have movies that in a world right now where they're grabbing every ip, slapping some A listers on it and putting it out in theaters and not really caring how it resonates with fans, that movies like this need meaning, they need story, they need character development. You can't just throw it out in the theaters, throw out some cheap merchandise and just try to make a bunch of money off of this ip. This one, I feel had a lot of intention behind it, a lot of world building, and maybe in the next one they spend a little bit more money. One hundred fifty million dollars.

00:28:07
Speaker 2: Is a lot, but I think if we could get it up to.

00:28:09
Speaker 1: Two hundred, two hundred and fifty million dollars, depending on how well this movie does, which I.

00:28:13
Speaker 2: Think it's gonna crush.

00:28:14
Speaker 1: I think by a Minecraft movie too, the visuals can be so much better. They bring in some more characters, get in some more building in there, and I think this is a great step in the right direction of making great movie video game adaptations because we need them.

00:28:30
Speaker 2: It is low key one.

00:28:31
Speaker 1: Of my favorite genres. It has inspired me to, at some point in my life want to go play Minecraft now.

00:28:38
Speaker 2: So for a Minecraft.

00:28:39
Speaker 1: Movie, I give it three point five out of five Lava Chickens.

00:28:47
Speaker 2: It's time to head down to movie.

00:28:49
Speaker 1: Mike Traylor, Paul Leonardo DiCaprio is the greatest actor alive. I don't even think that's too crazy of a thing to say. I felt this way for a long time, going back to the nineties with Titanic, going back to the twenty tens with inception Django Unchain, Leo steps into a role and it immediately becomes a great movie because not only it's him and his name being attached to a movie instantly tell me that it's something that I want to watch. It instantly becomes one of my favorite movies of the year that it is released, and oftentimes enters into my favorite movies of all time. There are no other actors I can think in my lifetime that have achieved that for me, Not Tom Hanks, not Denzel Washington, not Tom Cruise, not Meryl Streep, not Julia Roberts, not even Sandra Bullock. And I do love me some Sandy b. He is just that type of actor for me, the actor the goat in my opinion, and he's now teaming up with one of the best working directors, Paul Thomas Anderson. The movie is called One Battle After Another. It is coming out this year on September twenty sixth in theaters. It also stars Sean Penn, Benicio Letro, Regina Hall, Tiana Taylor, and Alana Hyam, who was also in the last Paul Thomas Anderson movie, Licorice Pizza, which came out in twenty twenty one. The movie follows a group of ex revolutionaries whose enemy resurfaces after sixteen years. It depicts a race against time where they try to rescue the daughter of Leonardo DiCaprio and Tiana Taylor. This trailer looks like a lot of chaos, a lot of fun, a dark satirical comedy with some action thrown in there. Before I get into more, here's just a little bit of the one battle after another trailer.

00:30:39
Speaker 2: This is Bob Ferguson. I was a part of the French seventy five Steve Locktrow guspah Tacher home and I cannot remember for the life of my only child. The answer to your question, maybe you should have spent me the rebellion text of Little Harner. I need to find my daughter. Well, then call us back when you have out.

00:31:00
Speaker 1: At the time, you just you.

00:31:03
Speaker 2: Just you know what freedom is.

00:31:06
Speaker 3: No fear.

00:31:09
Speaker 2: That you sense Thanxian sense. Thank you.

00:31:16
Speaker 1: There are a lot of things I love about this trailer. It opens up with what you heard there Leonardo DiCaprio at a pay phone speaking in code, which I think is really interesting. Sounds like he's trying to get some information, but it looks like he's frustrated trying to find his daughter and he can't remember this password, and it doesn't look at this moment like they want to help him. So we teams up with the sense Beniso Legoro, so he has to track down his sense who in this movie looks like he's gonna teach him to live without fear. There are some great shots in this trailer, which I think really sets itself apart from anything I've seen this year so far.

00:31:51
Speaker 2: There's a really great shot.

00:31:52
Speaker 1: Of Leonardo and Benicio driving in this car and you see Leonardo DiCaprio like fly out of the car, and just that shot that to him rolling down the hill looks fantastic. It looks like there's gonna be a lot of dry humor. You see Leonardo DiCaprio's love interest in this movie shooting off a round of ammunition, so you have a little bit of action, crime and drama as he plays this civil rights activist who is joining this anti government group to take on a white supremacist organization. This movie was shot on thirty five millimeter film, which gives it that rich.

00:32:27
Speaker 2: Grainy look that I love.

00:32:28
Speaker 1: Going to the theater to see one of the last movies I saw in thirty five millimeters was actually Licorice Pizza. What I love about that and I don't want to see him Like I'm a huge film snob and I can tell the quality of a film, but for me, I like the warmth of a movie. And when I went to go see Licorice Pizza in theaters, which was the last Paul Thomas Anderson movie, it was in thirty five millimeter, you can see the scratches on the screen just subtly. If you pay attention, you can see whenever they have to switch to film reels, you start to see, like this, a little flicker in the right corner, which is the indicator to the projectionist that it's time to flip over to the next one. And there's just something about the way a movie plays on thirty five millimeter that it's almost like if you had your favorite album and you've only listened to it on an MP three player or your CD player back in the day, or you've only listened to it on a streaming service. If you take that same favorite album and you listen to it on vinyl, you can hear the little cracks of the needle you can feel the warmth of the song a little bit more because it adds like this layer of texture that you can't get by listening to something digitally. I think that's why I really enjoy it, and for me, I feel like it's watching a movie the way the filmmaker intended you to see that movie. And there are only a handful of directors where I feel that really matters. Paul Thomas Anderson is one, Quentin Tarantino is another one.

00:33:50
Speaker 2: I would also.

00:33:51
Speaker 1: Put Christopher Nolan in that category because when I went to go see Oppenheimer and not thirty five millimeter but seventy millimeter, i'm he actually paid for the theater here in Nashville, which is one of the only theaters that has the capability to show a movie in seventy millimeters imax. He paid for that theater to have their system fixed so it could show his.

00:34:14
Speaker 2: Movie in that highest quality.

00:34:17
Speaker 1: So there's something about it to me that makes it feel like you're getting it in all of its glory, with it losing as little quality from when it was made to when it gets into your eyeballs. That is why I enjoy it, and sometimes it just gets lost when you watch a little clip on your phone, or you watch the movie on your laptop.

00:34:35
Speaker 2: So I just.

00:34:35
Speaker 1: Think that a little bit of that old school Hollywood field exists when you can actually go watch a movie shown like this. And I also know that not everybody can experience it this way, but it is a reason to check your local theater, which is another thing I really encourage.

00:34:52
Speaker 2: Support your local theater in your.

00:34:54
Speaker 1: Town or wherever you can get to one close to you that actually shows movies on film. This movie is based on a nineteen ninety novel called Vineland, and the reason this movie hits home it was filmed in the Albosto, Texas. I'm a Texas guy. I was born in North Texas, spent a lot of time in Central Texas, and also visited West Texas a lot. My dad was a truck driver, so he did a lot of loads over to Albaso, so I grew up going there a lot as a kid. And anytime a movie on the level of scale that this one is is shot in your home state, that means a lot.

00:35:29
Speaker 2: I really wish when they.

00:35:30
Speaker 1: Made Blue Beetle, which that story actually takes place in the Albosto. In the comic books that they would have actually filmed it there. They kind of changed his interpretation of where the story was set from the comics to the making of that movie. But I'll take it here with seeing Leonardo DiCaprio in Texas looking awesome, and by the looks of the trailer, it really captures the landscape of the city. It reminds me at times one of my other favorite movies that had some parts filmed in Texas, No Country for Old Men. When it comes to Paul Thomas Anderson, I really enjoy hearing how much actors love working with him. When it comes to me and my relationship with his movies, at times he is hit or miss with me. I can be watching a Paul Thomas Anderson movie and know that this is great and special and why somebody who was a real cinophile would watch these and enjoy them and be able to dissect them as to why they are such great films. He has been nominated for eleven Oscars in his lifetime, so he is a fantastic director that I always pay attention and take note of anything he puts out. With that being said, he still is hit or miss for me. I can always respect what he does, but they're not always my favorite movies. There are some directors on his level that, no matter what they put out, much like I was talking about Leonardo DiCaprio earlier, I feel like they're going to be my favorite movie. His still have to kind of earn that for me. His last movie, Licorice Pizza, I thought was pretty good, came out back in twenty twenty one. It was a nostalogic coming up age story set in the nineteen seventies. I love the look and feel of that movie, the overall aesthetic, more than I did the actual story. His movies are also known for being pretty long. It's reported right now that one Battle after Another is clocking in at about two hours and fifty minutes, which is a girthy movie. And there are some directors who put out longer movies that you really feel that run time. I don't think that's the case with him. I always feel like he utilizes his run times in a really strategic way, and he has a reason for making each act so long. So in this case, I don't feel the two hour and fifty minute runtime on this movie feels as daunting to me as the two hour and thirteen minute runtime of Licorice Pizza. But if I had to pick a favorite Paul Thomas Anderson movie, I think I would go with two thousand and two's Punch Drunk Love because what it did for Adam Sandler's career, who at that time was really just known as the Sandman putting out wacky, zany comedies, and that was the first time we had to look at him being a well rounded actor, of being able to do a dramatic role. And that was a really great movie for not only me is the viewer, but also for Adam Sandler's career, who anytime he dips back in to the dramatic world, I think he references that movie a lot and thanks Paul Thomas Anderson for what he did for his career. So I think because I love Adam Sandler so much, that is why that movie ranks pretty high on my list. But then he's look at Boogie Knights from ninety seven, There Will Be Blood from two thousand and seven.

00:38:29
Speaker 2: The Master, which I really enjoyed.

00:38:31
Speaker 1: But anytime I recommended The Master to anybody else, which was the movie with Joaquin Phoenix and Phillips Seymour Hoffman, and it was kind of a psychological drama. Anytime I recommended it to someone they didn't like it. That's a movie you really have to be in the mood for. But that one really reminds me of back in the red box days, where I would just walk to the seven eleven, hit the red box on the way home, and watch a movie almost every single night. That movie was right there in my run of just going to the red box so much. But the odd thing about Paul Thomas anderson movies for me is there not really comfort movies that I go back and rewatch a whole lot. Even though they are these really great, important pieces in cinema, I don't often feel like they have the most rewatchability. But now seeing him and Leonardo DiCaprio working together for the first time, I also love me some benicios, So maybe this one could be the movie for me. The movie has a hefty budget of one hundred and forty million dollars, so I'm hoping for a lot of action and more surprises. Again, It's coming out in theaters on September twenty sixthez.

00:39:34
Speaker 5: And that was this week's edition of Movie Line.

00:39:37
Speaker 1: Tramor Bar and that is gonna do it for another episode here of the podcast. But before I go, I got to give my listeners shout out of the week. Last week we had an interview with the stars and writers of The Ballot of Wallace Island. If you missed that episode, just go back one in the feed. But I gave out the secret emoji that you could comment message me with, and I said I would give whoever replies with that first. And this week's listener shout Out of the Week goes to Victoria Kluba. I hope I am saying your name correctly. It is k l u Ba who applied to my story after I posted about that episode with the guitar emoji. You listen right on Monday morning when I put out the new episode, So thank you for listening. And this week it is time for another secret emoji because we had the stars, writers and directors of Hell of a Summer. So if you want to comment, DM message me send me an email moviemke d at gmail dot com. This week's secret emoji is the camping emoji. There are a couple you can use. There's one that's just the tent, there's one with the tent and the tree. But I'll be posting some clips on TikTok, Instagram, and x You can also check out that full interview on my YouTube page YouTube dot com slash Mike Distro. If you ever forget any of those links, they are always in the episode notes. But that's this week's secret emoji. Send me that and you'll get next week's listeners.

00:40:59
Speaker 2: Shout out of the week

00:41:00
Speaker 1: And until next time, go out and watch good movies and I will talk to you later